Stream Lushes Service Industry (Stereogum Premiere)

The Brooklyn duo Lushes are not a post-rock band in the popular sense of the term. They don’t create lengthy, crescendo-driven instrumentals designed to pulverize you like a descending meteorite. Rather, they attack more directly by challenging the conventions of form and texture with a traditional rock set-up. Their last album, What Am I Doing?, did exactly that by using guitars, synthesizers and percussion to switch between states of nervous tension and release. Service Industry continues down that path, upping the ante with more jarring sonic explorations and propulsive energy. Midpoint “You Only Have” is a particularly freaky spoken-word track; in a baleful voice like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, guitarist James Ardery says, “We all want to wake up, Joel / But what you need to know, Joel / Is that you only have what I want you to have, Joel,” until a maniacal buzz-saw guitar shreds its way in. The entire album is made up of these kind of exhilarating moments. Stream it below.